Tom Ford: Teen Spirit

Tom Ford was 20 and living alone in West Hollywood when he first read A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood’s exquisitely observed novel of love, friendship, loss, bereavement, and salvation. Its action unfolds over a single day in 1962 that begins as the central character, George, is grieving over the death of his longtime lover, Jim. “I fell in love with him,” Ford remembers of his first encounter with the fictional George. “It was a beautiful character study.”

Almost three decades later, Ford related to George in an entirely different way. All the principal characters—George; his onetime lover, Charley, a giddy English socialite; and Kenny, a questioning young student—face moments of great change. “I was going through a similar thing,” Ford explains. “I had left Gucci. I couldn’t see my future. I’d had a voice in contemporary culture, and now I had none.” So he returned to the book that had so engaged him as a young man. “When I read it again,” he remembers, “it immediately spoke to me. I hadn’t picked up on its spirituality or the understanding of the midlife crisis; you can’t see your future when you’re 20 years old.”

Ford cast Colin Firth as George, and he plays him with deeply affecting nuance. Julianne Moore is the golden, bawdy Charley, unsure of where the future will take her. Matthew Goode is Jim, George’s winningly assured lover. In the key role of Kenny, a student of George’s who will prove something of a redeeming angel in his life, Ford had already cast a well-known English actor when Chris Weitz, one of his coproducers, showed him an audition tape made by Nicholas Hoult, whom Weitz had directed in 2002′s About a Boy with Hugh Grant. “I felt sick inside,” says Ford. “He read the part so beautifully—he was Kenny. I was not about to get rid of someone already attached to the project, but on the first day of rehearsal the other actor pulled out. He never called me—no excuses. But it became a really great moment; Nick was meant to play the role of Kenny. As George says in the film, ‘Everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.’ ”

For the 20-year-old Hoult—a heartthrob for his role in the BBC’s edgy high school drama series Skins who will appear in Louis Leterrier’s forthcoming sword-and-sandals epic Clash of the Titans—the summons to Los Angeles was initially underwhelming. “To be perfectly honest, growing up in Reading I wasn’t really aware of Tom Ford,” he admits. When he checked his credits on the Internet Movie Database, “all that came up was an extra in Zoolander!” he says, laughing. But when he sat down with Ford, he “realized how passionate he was about the project. In many ways it was autobiographical—a love poem to Richard [Buckley, Ford's longtime partner]—and my character was Tom when he was eighteen.” Following the meeting Hoult researched Ford and sheepishly “realized what a phenomenon he was.”

“I definitely saw bits of myself in Kenny,” Ford concurs. “When I was young I was drawn to older people because I wanted to learn. I’ve always felt 50 years old—when I was seven, I felt 50. Now that I am that age, I’m drawn to younger people. As you become jaded, they can make you see life in a fresh way.”

Ford’s movie is a dream of beauty, but his thoughtful interpretation of Isherwood’s story—and occasionally radical reworking (he co-wrote the screenplay with David Scearce)—and the extraordinary performances he elicits lift it far beyond a study in high style. Ford’s fetish for period veracity suggests that he is a Luchino Visconti for our age. Ford ensured, for instance, that George’s writing paper was ordered from Smythson and that his suit, presumed to have been made for him at Anderson & Sheppard several years earlier, bore his name and that date on its inside pocket.

“From the framing of each shot to every single small item, it was immaculate,” says Hoult—adding modestly, “with great performances from the other actors.” In fact, Hoult’s own performance is quietly compelling. “He’s subtle,” says Ford, “and his subtlety is important because you know George is subtle, and they are bookends of the same character. They are one thing on the surface, but right underneath there’s an inner life, a romance, a sweetness.

“I have always thought of myself as a commercial fashion designer,” adds Ford. “Some fashion designers are artists. I’m not saying what I do isn’t artistic, but this was the first purely artistic, expressionistic thing I have ever done.”